Enrollment in Denver Public Schools has grown 14 percent over the past five years, making it the fastest-growing large urban district in the country, the district reports.

DPS figures show its student population has grown by 10,300, since 2007, to 84,131 students.

Superintendent Tom Boasberg attributed the growth partly to the influx of new students from growing neighborhoods like Stapleton, and partly to Denver schools getting better.

“Clearly the schools are benefitting from the city being a more attractive place to live and as part of virtuous cycle, more and more people are coming to live in the city because the schools are much better,” Boasberg said.

The gains came during a period in which many of the largest urban districts experienced double-digit declines in student population, according to numbers compiled by the Council for Great American Schools. The council’s data show DPS outgrew the 67 other districts it tracked.

The state still ranks the district in its lowest performing category. But, Boasberg said, in the most recent round of standardized tests DPS scored the greatest achievement growth of any of the state’s largest districts.

The district is perhaps proudest of its gains in middle school. Just a decade ago, a child entering sixth grade was often a signal for a family to high tail it out of the city and into the suburbs.

Between 2002 and 2007, middle school enrollment declined by 1,300 students, or 8 percent, in Denver.

Contrast that to the most recent five-year period, when middle school enrollment grew by 16.5 percent.

The improvement in middle schools, and the middle school choices that keep families in the district result from a two-pronged approach of investing in improvements for neighborhood schools and “at same time welcoming and encouraging high performing new schools, both district-run and charter,” he said.

In addition, Boasberg said ninth-grade enrollment has jumped 60 percent in the far northeast area of the city, including the Montbello and Green Valley Ranch neighborhoods. Those areas have benefited from an influx of capital and effort to transform what had been poor schools, closing some and reinventing others.

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